A House Without Mirrors (7 page)

N
obody woke me up, so I slept until half past nine, and when I finally woke it was to a low rumbling noise. It grew and disappeared, grew and disappeared in the corridor outside my bedroom, and I couldn’t understand what it was.

In the end I kicked off the duvet, pulled on my dressing gown and opened the door.

Erland was standing at the end of the corridor, outside the half-open door to the dressing room. He was holding the handles of Henrietta’s empty wheelchair and looking at me.

“What are you doing?” I said. “How did you manage to get the wheelchair down the stairs on your own? You know you are not allowed to use it.”

Erland didn’t reply. Instead he started running towards me with the wheelchair in front of him. It
came faster and faster and the same rumbling sound that had woken me up grew stronger.

“Erland, cut it out!” I said, and stepped into the corridor. “Stop, and let go of the wheelchair!”

Something in his eyes alerted me. He wasn’t going to stop. On the contrary, he hoped I would stay put so that he could run into me.

At the last moment I jumped back into my room. Erland didn’t even slow down.

“You little shit!” I shouted after him.

At the end of the corridor he stopped and turned around.

“I hope you go to hell.”

He said it so calmly, so completely without emotion, that I could think of nothing to say.

It wasn’t a great start to the day, but it was going to get worse.

Dad was standing in the kitchen preparing lunch. For once he didn’t seem to be cooking just for Henrietta, but for everybody. There were plenty of vegetables on the counter: potatoes, bunches of carrots, leeks and French beans. He must have gone to the market that morning, and that was probably when Erland had taken the wheelchair.

Uncle Daniel was sitting by the table reading the morning paper, so I didn’t mention anything about what had happened in the corridor. It was no use talking about Erland when Uncle Daniel was around. He refused to listen and made sure Dad didn’t listen to me either.

“Where is Wilma?” I asked when Dad smiled quickly at me over his shoulder. “Is she awake?”

Dad didn’t reply at once, which gave Uncle Daniel the opportunity.

“Well, at least she was awake a little while ago,” he said with one of his mirthless little laughs. “There was one hell of a racket here earlier.”

I ignored him just the way he usually ignored me and kept my eyes on Dad.

“Where is Wilma, Dad?”

“I think they went into the conservatory,” he said, with that anxious frown on his brow. “But perhaps you shouldn’t…”

“Who?” I asked. “Wilma and Signe?”

Both Dad and Daniel looked surprised.

“Kajsa and Wilma,” Dad said. “I think they probably want to be left alone.”

I could hear their voices when I went into the
dining room. Somebody was angry, somebody was crying, but I couldn’t make out who.

Wilma often quarrelled with her mother and I usually stayed out of it. It was always about such silly things. Like who had put a red sock in the white wash, who had watered an orchid to death, who won
Idols
four years ago, things like that. I never had the energy to take much notice.

But this time it sounded different. Not least because I heard my name being mentioned several times.

I grew more perplexed when I opened the door to the conservatory, because it wasn’t Wilma who was crying. It was Kajsa.

“There she is,” Wilma said as I entered. “Now you can ask her yourself.”

Kajsa looked at me, but she didn’t look as if she wanted to ask me anything at all. She looked as if she wanted me to get lost.

“Don’t drag Thomasine into this, Wilma,” she snivelled, wiping her face on the sleeve of her jumper. “I still haven’t had an apology from you.”

Wilma shook her head.

“I meant everything I said.”

Her hair was still tied back with the ribbon that Hetty had wound around it and I still thought she looked beautiful. It was really hard to explain, because nothing in Wilma’s appearance had really changed. But when I saw them both together, she was more beautiful than Kajsa.

“Wilma, you’ve got to speak to somebody,” Kajsa said. “We may have to take you to hospital.”

Wilma smiled. Her eyebrows rose and she looked surprised.

“To hospital?” she said in a voice that was completely calm. “Mum, do you think this is about me being ill?”

“Yes, I do!” Kajsa said, unexpectedly loud. “You come here babbling about mirrors and the truth and about your dad being dead and—”

“I didn’t say that Kjell was dead,” Wilma interrupted calmly. “I said that he’s not alive. That’s not the same thing.”

“Whatever!” Kajsa shouted. “You don’t talk like that about your father!”

“But it’s true.”

Kajsa lost it and started yelling so that you could hardly understand what she was saying. I have never
seen her so angry. Nor could I tell what it was all about, apart from the fact that Wilma had obviously said things about her and Kjell.

Whatever it was, it could hardly have been worse than what Kajsa said to Wilma.

I didn’t think a mother was capable of saying such things to her own child. I had only ever heard such things said in films. Throughout it all Wilma stood there without saying a word to defend herself. I got the sense that she felt sorry for Kajsa.

After a while Kajsa started crying again and walked out. She was still crying when the doors slammed behind her.

When Kasja was gone Wilma sank down on the bench where she and Signe had been sitting just the night before.

I walked over and cautiously sat down next to her.

“Wilma? What happened?” She sat with her gaze fixed on the lily pond in the middle of the conservatory. It held neither water nor lilies, and was just grey cement, but I knew it wasn’t the cement that Wilma was looking at.

“Sometimes you have to tell it just the way it is.”

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.

“What did you tell her, then?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Why did Kajsa get so mad?”

Wilma turned her head. It was as if she only right then realized I was there.

“What did I tell her?” she asked. “The truth, of course. The whole truth.”

“Did you tell her…” I had to stop and swallow several times before I could carry on. I didn’t know why my mouth was so dry. “Did you tell her about the house of mirrors? About Hetty?”

Wilma looked at me.

“They’d never understand,” she said. “They don’t want to know. It’s easier for them to think that I’ve gone crazy.”

In a way it was a relief when she said it, because up until then I had not known who had been right. But something about the new-found confidence of Wilma’s voice still worried me.

“Things will soon settle back down,” I said, moving a little closer. “Come dinner time, Kajsa will have forgotten all about it.”

Wilma did not offer any resistance when I took her hand, but neither did she squeeze mine back.

“But I won’t,” she said. “Things will never be the same again.”

She sounded sad as she said this, but still determined. I felt apprehension rise within me.

Would Wilma leave now?

“Can’t you tell her you’re sorry, then?” I said. “That you didn’t mean what you said? You only have to say it, it won’t hurt you.”

“Yes,” Wilma said quietly. “Yes, Thomasine, it would.”

She patted my hand and got to her feet.

“It will have to work, one way or another,” she said, smiling a little. “They can’t throw me out, can they?”

And then she was gone. I immediately realized that she would leave the house and go home, perhaps that very day.

I remained seated on the bench, feeling Wilma’s absence like a dead weight in my stomach. It pulled me down, and I couldn’t even turn my head when I heard the dry bamboo stalks rustling behind me.

Erland, of course.

It was probably half an hour before I could even stand up. I couldn’t think, could find no words of
comfort or explanation. Everything felt like a total loss.

But while I was sitting on that bench I realized something, even if I didn’t know what to do with it: though it was true that my feeling of loss was related to Wilma having changed, it was not the cause. The feeling of loss was something to do with my being exactly the same as I was the day before.

I
t was just as I thought, and an hour later Wilma’s room was empty. Her books and clothes had been hastily packed in two large paper bags and only the mattress remained, stripped bare and abandoned on the bed. Kajsa’s room had been vacated too, and the only proof of a former occupant was a faint smell of something sweet.

We were supposed to have Dad’s vegetable bake for lunch, but when it was time to eat no one was hungry. Dad had escaped up to Henrietta. Wilma was nowhere to be seen, and Kajsa had already called for a cab. On my way through the corridor I heard her voice from the kitchen.

“It’s this bloody house,” Kajsa said in a whisper. “It’s as if it’s contagious. You saw what happened to Signe, didn’t you?”

“Signe is fine.”

It was Uncle Daniel.

“Perhaps,” Kajsa said. “But what Wilma said was completely, utterly mad!”

I held my breath and heard Uncle Daniel sigh.

“But Kajsa, dear,” he said. “You don’t pay any attention to the kids, do you? Something good is worth waiting for, don’t you think?”

“It’s hardly worth it. I don’t want to stay here!”

Kajsa’s voice sounded harsh and you could tell that she was barely keeping it all together.

“You imagine things,” Uncle Daniel said. “But just let me know if you want to give up your role. Such things can be arranged.”

“Like hell,” Kajsa hissed. “I will be back. But alone.”

A little later I heard a cab’s horn at the gate and went down the hall with Signe to say goodbye. Kajsa had only packed her own stuff and she looked the other way when Wilma came downstairs with her paper bags. But at least she was allowed to share the taxi. Only Signe and I waved.

We had the vegetable bake for dinner instead,
and it felt as if the kitchen had grown, or the lamplight was brighter. No pizza, no Wilma. Just Dad, me, Signe and Uncle Daniel, silent around the table. Erland didn’t want any.

After dinner I managed to get Henrietta’s ancient TV on the first floor going so that Signe could watch children’s TV. Wilma had previously tried to watch TV a couple of times, but she had thought the picture quality was poor. It was a bit grainy and the colours were strange, but Signe didn’t seem to mind. She curled up on the sofa, leaning up against me. I don’t know if she had ever watched children’s TV before. Uncle Daniel doesn’t like TV.

It was nice being with Signe, but once I had put her to bed things felt twice as empty. I thought about going back to the TV, or even calling somebody from my old class, but I ended up sitting by the window on the landing with one of Wilma’s books for the whole evening. Dad walked past every now and again, wondering if everything was all right, and Uncle Daniel asked a couple of times if I had seen Erland.

I answered them both that I didn’t know.

The loss felt like a bubble around me and I could neither understand what I was reading nor what anyone said to me. It was not until after supper, when I was in bed trying to go to sleep, that something managed to burst through.

“Thomasine?”

The knock on the door was just like Dad’s, but it wasn’t his voice. I sat up in bed, pulling the duvet up to my chin.

“Yes?”

The handle was turned down and Uncle Daniel’s face appeared in the gap.

“Are you sure you don’t know where Erland is?” he said. “I haven’t seen him all evening.”

He didn’t sound worried, just surprised, but a ripple went through my stomach like cold water.

“Neither have I,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

Uncle Daniel nodded without looking at me.

“Goodnight, then.”

When he had closed the door I lay back again, but I was fully awake. It was true that I hadn’t seen Erland for several hours, perhaps not since lunch.

Most likely he was just hiding somewhere as usual, but what if he had hurt himself? What if he was trapped somewhere?

What if he was lying under water?

I closed my eyes and wandered through every room in Henrietta’s house in my mind. There was nothing dangerous in any of them, really. Nor in the garden.

You could maybe get stuck in the mangle in the basement, but for that you would almost need to be two people. There was an old clothes chest in one of the bedrooms where somebody Signe’s age could get stuck, perhaps suffocate after a while… But no, not Erland. It would be easy for him to lift the lid.

So where was he, then?

It was not until I had been lying silently in the dark for a quite a while that I noticed the noise. I realized that I had heard it several times without understanding what it could be.

Now I noticed that it came from somewhere far away, and it sounded like when you cry with your mouth closed. It was just a cry without a word or tone. I wasn’t even sure if it was a cry for help, but I was sure about one thing: the voice belonged to Erland.